German Automaker Reportedly Hoarding As Much Physical Silver As it Can Acquire

Last month we posted a report (which subsequently went viral) from an Apple contractor who claimed that Apple has delayed production on the new 27″ iMacs due to an industrial silver shortage in China.

New signs of an extremely tight wholesale physical silver market have now emerged, as a first-hand account has revealed that one of the largest and most famous German automakers is hoarding massive amounts of physical silver inside one of the most secure vaults in Zurich, Switzerland.

Financial writer Byron King, who viewed the massive German automaker’s silver hoard in Zurich stated:Why does the German company store dozens of pallets of silver in a secure vault deep in the mountains of Switzerland? It’s simple, really. So that the metal is there when the car maker needs it. As one purchasing manager explained later in my travels, “For some metals, like silver, there’s no such thing as ‘just in time’ delivery anymore.”
In other words, this German company buys silver when it’s available. In fact, the company buys as much as it can acquire. Then it stores and stockpiles the material in a vault in the mountains of Switzerland, right next to the pope’s gold.

King begins the narrative by explaining that he was recently given a tour of one of the largest private vaults in Zurich, Switzerland, the same vault that houses the Vatican’s massive gold hoard:

Last summer, I visited a storage vault dug deep into solid rock and buried in the hills north of Zurich, Switzerland. It’s a massive complex, right down the road from a Swiss Army base (and that’s no accident). You can enter this facility only by prior appointment, because the Swiss customs department has to do a background check on you. The Swiss are very thorough, you may have heard.

Source: Daily Resource Hunter

The vault is constructed with huge steel beams and enclosed by thick, reinforced concrete walls. Accompanied by an armed guard, you have to walk down a long, sloping set of corridors and then take an elevator to get to the deep levels. Heck, it’s like visiting a secure, military command bunker — of which I’ve seen a few in the course of my life’s journey. Finally, after a hike, you arrive at the business end of this facility.

This is no fly-by-night, rent-a-locker storage operation just off the interstate. It’s world-class. It’s a Swiss Fort Knox. In fact, in one zone of the vault, the Vatican keeps its gold. Seriously. As the vault manager told me, “Ja, de pope. He puts his faith in God. But he keeps his gold in Switzerland.”

King states that adjacent to the vault storing the Pope’s gold was a vault loaded down with physical stockpiles of silver hoarded by a German automaker:

In another zone of the same complex, a German automaker — a household name whose motorcars are revered across the world — stores industrial quantities of silver, and I mean a LOT of it. Here’s a photo of just a few pallets that belong to the German company.

Source: Daily Resource Hunter

These pallets cover the floor of a large room and are loaded down with innumerable 22-pound bags (10 kilograms, actually) of .999 fine silver. There’s way more silver than what you see in the photo, but it’s among the few pictures I was allowed to take.

King essentially confirms Ted Butler’s prediction that major industrial users of silver would begin hoarding the metal when serious wholesale supply constraints began to emerge:

Why does the German company store dozens of pallets of silver in a secure vault deep in the mountains of Switzerland? It’s simple, really. So that the metal is there when the carmaker needs it. As one purchasing manager explained later in my travels, “For some metals, like silver, there’s no such thing as ‘just in time’ delivery anymore.”

In other words, this German company buys silver when it’s available. In fact, the company buys as much as it can acquire. Then it stores and stockpiles the material in a vault in the mountains of Switzerland, right next to the pope’s gold.

Perhaps Apple should have had a silver vault in Zurich.

While the retail investment community bemoans silver’s 2 year correction, large industrial users have been using silver’s price weakness and boring trading action to acquire and hoard massive physical supplies of the metal.

Combine the potential for an industrial silver panic with record breaking investment silver retail sales, and the formula is in place for a historically unprecedented, upside explosion in silver of Biblical proportions as both investors and industrial users frantically search for any physical silver metal they can acquire- regardless of price.

For some metals like silver, there’s no such thing as just in time delivery anymore. As the German automaker’s executives know full well, the time to acquire physical silver is now, while physical supplies can still be found.

44 thoughts on “German Automaker Reportedly Hoarding As Much Physical Silver As it Can Acquire”

I can’t help it, the phrase that exploded in my mind (with absolutely NO derogatory sentiments toward ANYBODY) was: “No shit, Dick Tracy”. (Of course, some will not get it, and I’m sure the learned posters here will assist in explaining its origin.)

The irony of an automobile company being forthright in allowing the press to at least visually confirm their ‘stash’, when the ‘highly trustworthy’ bankers and governments keep theirs impenetrably hidden from scrutiny is a glaring sign of blatant lies and subterfuge.

Spot on. Sometimes the propaganda spewed on this site is worse than that of the banksters. And in the case of Apple, don’t you think Apple has enough dough to offer $10 over spot if they really needed silver. If silver’s big advantage is that its price doesn’t add much to the overall cost of the whole unit, then it shouldn’t be a huge deal for a company like Apple to offer $40 for silver. And if supplies were really tight, couldn’t a big company offer $50/oz and get their supply. At $50/oz how much does that affect the price of a car?

Offtopic: Pat, Thank you for that link a few weeks back on the things you are interested in. It has sent me off on new investigations and I am learning a lot. I dont remember the link you posted, but it led me to Carl Miller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s-zHrNPfkQ

@legerde … Carl Miller is one of the best fellows out here. Soak in all you can, Friend. A lot of the highest quality guys are up in age and there really aren’t very many young folks taking up their banner with the same vigor and tanacity for accuracy. I’m pleased you’re ‘bitten by the bug’. That’s encouraging beyond expression.

Well they managed to get silver below $30 this week. Woo hoo. Congratulations. The refreshing thing is that these very same people within ten years or so will probably be more appropriately employed in say a two star hotel in China cleaning toilets and getting acquainted with other turds.

That’s just being plain naive. The same people knocking down silver are the ones who will clean up. I’m so sick of hearing people say how the explosion in silver is going to implode JPM because of their huge short position. That short position is probably owned by the government (or a government) and is peanuts in comparison to everything else.

@silvertim The point is Tim it’s the availability not the cost that is in question. You can offer to pay as much as you want for silver but it’s the chore of finding it later on. Why do you think WE Are Stacking Now?

Marchas45 …I agree with you in a sense. I think we are at least years away from it being a chore to find. What should happen sooner is that it will be more expensive to buy. Not too long ago there was an article on here about new silver finds in various countries.

@Stacksmack3000 Yes they will still be mining it but the industries will be buying it up and Stacking it just like we Stackers are doing. Hence the chore WE Stackers are going to have finding it and when we do, $$$$$$$$$ or maybe some other currency. LMAO

Well, to not have your own silver might be a problem even if you can raise prices and pay $10 over spot.
The moment YOU pay $10 over spot, everyone will. Next day it will be $12 over. Especially for you. Every ounce you don’t have costs you market share.
Also, these large industrials will be strong hands. If all industries stockpiled, we’d have heard of it. These guys will be in for the long haul. It would be good to know which car maker it is, as it shows long term commitment from top management. Not just because I like silver, but this is making sure, a good thing. Espcially for share holders.

Exactly. If Apple cracks and pays say $10 over spot or $40 per ounce, they would need to buy tens of millions of ounces to keep the factories running for a year. Maybe they need over 100 million ounces annually, iBabbles use a lot of silver. That would set off the forest fire in a mad scramble to acquire metal. We’d never see $40 an ounce again.

I’ll respond to that and say that the price will take care of any “shortages”. There may be some shortages of silver at $30 for larger buyers but I can guarantee you there are no shortages at $100. I get a kick out of people who say there are shortages because they run down to their local dealer on a price decline and he has nothing to sell. Duh, the local dealers won’t sell at a loss. They take it off the shelf and stick it in the back room. The only shortages that occur are at a certain price.

No shortage at $100 you say? In a true shortage situation, which is where we are at and escalating, there is no telling what the price will do. Especially since COMEX is not letting the pressure off. When it blows it may stop at $50. Or $500. Or $5,000. Or 50,000. And enough of a silver price rise will destroy the USD as a currency in my opinion.
Let’s take a real example from history.One would expect gold to fare well during such an extreme circumstance, and it did – in German marks, quite dramatically. In January 1919, one ounce of gold traded for 170 marks; by November 1923, that same ounce was worth 87 trillion marks.

May 1973: Gold $42.x an ounceJanuary 1980: Gold $850.x an ounce
My version of unregulated for silver is when COMEX can’t trade at any price. Right now silver leverage is 100:1–simply astounding to me. The deal breaker here is, you can’t keep printing paper certificates when manufacturers actually need the stuff–there’s a built in driver to silver that will ALWAYS need physical. I don’t think folks are excited about publishing “I can’t get my silver” when next month they’ll get it at 31.x–it’s to their advantage to keep quiet. Like Germany–keep quiet and stockpile. However, that tune will change when that month turns into two to six months.

Agreed. But remember there are huge shortages of silver. That’s why I can call up Hannes Tulving and order monster boxes right now…because there are shortages! That’s why I can order monster boxes from Gainesville too…because there are huge shortages! Pathetic…enough said. It’s time to go back to just reading Sinclair.

Take your pick. It’s either Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Porsche or Volkswagen. I don’t think the author was allowed to name names as he was there to look at something else. However, my guess would be you can email him and ask.
And here is silvertim in utter denial again. Oh I can buy from Tulving so there is no shortage. Moron.

Mercedes is known for their Silber Pfeile…
Could anyone mention a single LESSER known German car maker? Even Opel and Volkswagen wel fit the bill of well known.
Still, the author will not be allowed to disclose the name of the brand. And there is only one Vatican, and where their gold hang out was not the greatest secret.

I am getting a little tired of these articles too, echoing a previous poster. What company is it? So many of these articles mention no names, both here and also on kwn, and tell us what we want to hear but have little backed up facts such as names. Also, that picture of pallets with silver are never in a million years bars of silver. The bags have shape like their contents are powder and form that shape as a bag of cement does.
I know the silver story is true and I know there will be a price explosion, but this story is, especially because there is no manufacturer mentioned, and the rounded bags on the pallets make me think this article is dubious at best.
The only way those bags can possibly contain silver is if it was granulated!

and the rounded bags on the pallets make me think this article is dubious at best.LMAO It’s called Industrial .999 Silver Shot. Easier to work with than Bars. Lol Stick around and you will learn a lot on here.

@Marchaz45: It’s funny because just yesterday morning I was shopping around for 1 gram shot. They sell it at a well known but unnamed PM dealer. Smallest is ten ounce bags. They also have a .77 oz bottle But not in 1 troy oz.

For very large customers, this seems to be the case. For smaller buyers, not so much. Buying a few ounces to a few hundred ounces is not a big deal and never has been. It is when you start talking millions of ounces that it becomes difficult to fill orders. It’s the same with a lot of other things, though. Wanna buy 100-500 shares of stock? No problem. Want 1,000,000 shares of that same stock? BIG problem.

Ordered Maples Today, won’t ship til 3/5, Ordered some 1oz Silver Bullets 2 weeks ago from another place, it was supposed to ship last Monday, Called on it today, they said the shipment has been delayed, the new anticipated ship date is 2 weeks from now?!

I have Ordered from both these Popular places in the past, and never had a Delay before.
Interesting.

HAHAHA! So a German car company has almost more precious metal than the Bundesbank?!? That’s how it looks to me, because their “reserves” in London and Manhattan are toast. They might get half of it back in 8 years? lol

If there is one automaker known to be hoarding Silver, others are likely to be doing the same without making it into the news. The present delays in delivery of Silver purchases is a known fact. Whatever the cause of the delays, such delays signify that there are issues with the present supply of physical Silver being unable to meet market demand. Pushing down the spot price of Silver at times like these just makes more physical Silver being hoarded and taken away from the market. Silver in the $30s will be a lot like when Silver stayed in the $18s until such time the price increases could no longer be managed and contained. That was the right time to be buying Silver, and things are no different today.

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